Talk-Radio Hosts Turn Up Volume on School Politics

When dawn broke in Fort Wayne, Ind., on the last day of January,
snow covered the ground, and the temperature huddled in the low teens.
But inside the WGL radio studio, Paul Phillips basked in the glow of
victory as he fielded calls on his morning talk show.

William Coats, the Fort Wayne superintendent of schools and the man
Mr. Phillips had tarred and feathered daily on the air for the past 10
months, had announced his resignation.

While munching cake frosted with "Bye, Bye, Bill,'' Mr. Phillips
punched up caller after caller critical of Mr. Coats, who resigned to
join the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a private philanthropy in Michigan.
"I just wanted to thank you and everybody who stood up to that
fellow,'' one caller said. "I am so grateful that Kellogg is going to
have that flake.''

Mr. Coats, who had held the Fort Wayne job since June 1990, and
district officials scoff at the notion that Mr. Phillips had anything
to do with the superintendent's departure; managing the foundation's
youth programs represented a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,'' Mr.
Coats said in a recent interview.

Hot-Button Issue

Whatever part he did, or did not, play in the schools chief's move,
Mr. Phillips, 26, exemplifies the growing number of talk-radio hosts
nationwide who are making education a pet issue and pumping up the
volume on school politics.

While crime, Congress, and corruption top almost every talk-radio
host's list of hot-button issues, media analysts say education is
climbing fast.

George R. Kaplan, the author of Images of Education and a close
observer of media coverage of schools, says education has become a
favorite topic among talk-show hosts nationwide.

"When he has a little time and no scandal to talk about,'' Mr.
Kaplan said, a talk-show host "always takes up the latest educational
outrage.''

But the hunt for controversy is not the only reason radio
personalities spotlight schools. In a 1993 survey of radio talk-show
hosts in the top 100 U.S. markets by the Times Mirror Center for the
People and the Press, more hosts cited "improving the quality of
education in public schools'' as "critical'' than gave such a rating to
any other single issue.

And Mr. Phillips, who is the son of two teachers, says his concern
about the subject is genuine.

"I fear for where public education is going,'' the Fort Wayne host
said. "And without people getting involved, the so-called education
experts--the people I like to call 'educrats'--are going to take
over.''

'An Expensive Process'

Rising property taxes and declining academic achievement fuel talk
radio's education discussions, according to hosts. Radio stations have
led school-tax revolts in Georgia, New Jersey, and Utah. Talk-show
hosts also generally beat the drum against outcomes-based
education.

But the hosts who make education a centerpiece of their shows often
do more. Using rhetoric steeped in the kind of fervor hosts usually
reserve for Congress, they put school administrators under the
microscope and under attack.

Mike Siegel of radio station KVI in Seattle frequently targets
school officials throughout Washington State, who he says are
overpaid.

"I've named names and read salaries of school officials to
demonstrate the obnoxious level of income of the people who are not
even in the classroom teaching,'' he said.

In Minneapolis, Barbara Carlson, a former city council member who is
the host of a morning talk show on KSTP radio, regularly airs the home
telephone numbers of politicians and city officials, including school
board members.

"Education is such an expensive process that school board members
don't want to be known,'' said Peter Thiele, who produces Ms. Carlson's
show. "They think they're going to go to their little meetings once a
week, and no one's ever going to call them.''

Early last year, after an audit cited sloppy management in the
Minneapolis schools, Ms. Carlson broadcast the phone numbers of school
board members and called for the head of the city's school
superintendent, Robert Ferrera. Board members were swamped with calls
from hundreds of her listeners, and within a few days, the board voted
to suspend Mr. Ferrera; he eventually resigned. (See Education Week,
Feb. 10, 1993.)

The Minneapolis Star Tribune said Ms. Carlson "played a huge role''
in Mr. Ferrera's troubles, and she agreed. "This job is so much more
powerful than that city council seat,'' she told a columnist.

Leading the Critics

Paul Phillips's show debuted a year ago in Fort Wayne with school
issues as the anchor.

Mr. Phillips, along with the school board's small conservative
faction and its supporters, peppered officials of the 32,000-student
district with freedom-of-information requests and discussed
administrators' credit-card records, car-phone charges, and travel
expenses on the air. When a high school renovation plan included an
Olympic-size swimming pool, a high-tech radio studio, and other items
that the critics said pushed the cost to almost $40 million, they
campaigned against the project, collecting 10,000 petition
signatures.

Mr. Phillips frequently criticized the school board as Mr. Coats's
"rubber stamp.'' At one meeting, after Mr. Coats won a vote on a
finance issue, members of the audience waved rubber stamps.

"The big thing that really upset me was his attitude that he ran the
whole damn show,'' Mr. Phillips said of Mr. Coats. "He dictated policy
to the school board instead of the other way around. He was a very
arrogant individual.''

Mr. Phillips often targeted Mr. Coats in the musical parodies that
he sprinkles throughout the show. In a send-up of the Beach Boys' song
"Fun, Fun, Fun,'' Mr. Phillips changed the refrain to: "He'll spend
your funds, funds, funds, till the voters take his school board
away.''

Within months, the show's ratings had doubled, and Mr. Phillips had
become a leader among Mr. Coats's critics.

"He really did mobilize the vocal minority that opposed the
superintendent and questioned his actions,'' said Lisa Kim Bach, an
education reporter for the local News Sentinel newspaper. The News
Sentinel also reported on administrators' travel and entertainment
expenses, she said, "but people who had read it in the newspaper took
more notice of it when it came out on the Paul Phillips show.''

Joyce Preest, a local parent and an unsuccessful 1992 candidate for
the school board, said, "Paul Phillips's show gave parents a forum to
call with questions and concerns, pro and con, on issues the schools
wouldn't address.''

"When he first started,'' said Michael Malone, the district's
executive director for human resources, "the show was certainly
outrageous enough that there was some interest, the same interest that
you have when you drive by an accident so shocking that you have to
look.''

But his crusades had little effect on school policy, officials said.
"All I can say is that every single initiative, every single
recommendation that we made, was approved by the school board,'' Mr.
Coats said. He specifically pointed to the failure of the petition
drive against the high school renovation to persuade state officials to
reject the project.

Mr. Coats described Mr. Phillips's personal attacks as "fairly
relentless, even ruthless,'' and compared him to Rush Limbaugh, the
national radio talk-show host known for his biting
anti-liberalcommentary. "Limbaugh for me is far too negative and
biased, but this guy makes Limbaugh look like a choirboy,'' the former
superintendent said.

While district officials say they ignore Mr. Phillips's gibes,
school lawyers are monitoring his broadcasts and the district has
considered taking legal action over what officials call slanderous
attacks.

Meanwhile, Mr. Phillips says he is keeping a close watch on the
search for a new superintendent.

"If somebody comes in and wants to put O.B.E. in, or if somebody
wants to do 'portfolio assessments' and 'nonstandard assessments,'''
Mr. Phillips said, "then I'm going to fight it tooth and nail because I
believe my arguments make sense and theirs don't.''

"People pay me for my opinion, and that's my opinion.''

Vol. 13, Issue 29

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